Sportsbook & Casino Affiliate Programs Guide

Learn about sportsbook & casino affiliate programs, online gambling and learn about how to make money as a webmaster with revenue share and CPA commissions

Affiliate marketing is already a booming industry and there are so many conferences dedicated for affiliate marketers and publishers. Producing content and information for people will always be in demand and it’s no secret that the online gambling industry is one of the biggest and wealthiest fields for anyone to be in.

What are the biggest markets in online gambling?

Most people surprisingly get this all wrong. Out of all the major gambling markets you have these as the main categories

• Casino

• Sportsbetting

• Poker

• Bingo

• Lottery

• Skill games

If we take out skill games and also a segment of esports and fantasy sports out of the equation we have the big 5 of casino, sportsbetting, poker, bingo and lottery. What surprises most people is that online casinos are the biggest chunk of the gambling markets by far.

We’ll take a look at all the gambling affiliate programs by segment and talk about each market.

Casino Affiliate Programs

Online casino affiliate programs are the most lucrative part of online gambling. However online casinos are also extremely competitive and year after year, it becomes more challenging to launch an affiliate website that can compete with well established sites. English is clearly the most competitive language as most casinos have an English version of the website. Anything niche related is always a better way to try to gain some success. Just keep in mind the niches within online casinos are always getting more competitive too so topics like live dealer casinos, blackjack, no deposit bonuses, there are enough dedicated sites to compete with. The biggest mistake most new casino webmasters make is they try to make the super site right off the bat and want to compete against the likes of AskGamblers or ThePOGG but these sites have taken years to build with over 10,000 of pages of quality content.

The other good thing about online casinos over any other type of gambling is there are hundreds of online casinos you can choose to promote so as a webmaster, you have more quality operators to choose from and if you list every casino and review them all, you’re the one that is in a position of power. Every affiliate manager wants your #1 spot so now you get to tell them another casino has given you a good offer and can they beat it?

Researching Online Casinos & Checking Their History

One of the best casino portals for looking up any online casino is ThePOGG.com which they do their background checks on every casino. So if they find any casino groups are associated, they’ll highlight it, if any casino has a history of mistreating players, you’ll find a detailed history of them. They are the best resource for looking for recommended casinos. Many casino affiliates will check ThePOGG when looking to promote a program or learn if they should stay away from a program.

Sportsbook Affiliate Programs

Sportsbook affiliate programs are popular but also a bit underrated as it seems that only people that are into sports can think about setting up a site for betting on sports. Sportsbetting is a massive business but did you know that almost all online sportsbooks have a casino? Most sportsbooks rely on their casino for a main source of their profits. Yes for all the players that are betting on sports, many of them are playing at their casino and it’s a huge source of revenue for them and most sportsbetting affiliate managers will admit, the casino brings in the most income. So you can attract players with sports but get them betting on sports and playing the casino on the side. For every player that lays a $100 bet on a game, maybe the bookie will get $10 of it and this event doesn’t happen anywhere near as frequent as a player betting $5 on a slot machine or $25 at the blackjack table. Players will lose that money faster at the casino so when they are done placing their bets, if they are in the mood for it, they’ll keep gambling.

Sportsbook affiliates have less sportsbook operators to promote so you’ll want to make sure you are dealing with the best. Pay attention to programs that do NOT pay commission for players playing at the casino like Paddy Power.

Poker Affiliate Programs

Poker now is a fraction of what the industry used to be. Poker has been a gambling product that is the one not many want to touch. At it’s prime, online poker was buzzing but all of this changed quickly on Black Friday as PokerStars, FullTilt Poker, Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet all were seized by the Department of Justice and resulted in these sites closing down where FullTilt was eventually acquired by PokerStars, which the company was sold to Amaya Gaming for $4.6 billion. PokerStars has since terminated numerous revenue share contracts for webmasters and it’s one that poker affiliates don’t seem as keen to promote.

Bingo Affiliate Programs

Bingo affiliate programs are gaining in popularity as more affiliates are looking to get into the bingo niche. Bingo is a highly underrated aspect of online gambling and the bingo affiliates would like to keep it that way if they could. They know bingo is a great product that has high retention of players and many bingo softwares have slots embedded into their software so players can spin while they wait for their next bingo game to start.

Lottery Affiliate Programs

For some reason, every aspect of online gambling has advanced except for online lotteries which are still underdeveloped. Most lotteries are controlled by a gambling authority within a specific country where they haven’t all fully embraced online gambling. Instead what we are seeing are more lottery companies beating them to the game and offering either their own lotteries or the ability to bet on the results of lottery tickets. Lottery tickets are still mostly sold in the tradition form of a paper ticket that is printed out but it’s not long before we’ll have all your lottery ticket numbers tracked on a mobile application. This would make it nearly impossible to lose a ticket or have someone else find or steal your ticket.

If land based gaming operations launch their lotteries online, they will probably not have an affiliate program in place but if they do, then you’ll be able to promote their biggest local lotteries.

Revenue Share vs CPA

Revenue share is considered to be a better commission plan than CPA where CPA stands for Cost Per Acquisition. Revenue share commissions tend to range from 20% to 30% and will vary from program to program. These revenue share commissions are paid on losses coming from players so if a player losses $5000 where they deposited $5000, at 20% commission you would be getting $1000. For example you can get a single payment of $150 for referring a depositing player where on revenue share you could get a commission paid on the money lost from the player, or revenue generated. In theory the revenue share agreements are for life although affiliates need to read their terms and conditions carefully to ensure they don’t have any condition that would allow a program to terminate your account or reduce your commission rates for any reason.

Minimum Activity Quotas (MAQ)

If you see any programs with minimum activity quotas (MAQ) then you’ll want to work either on CPA or work out a direct deal with them confirming your account won’t be subjected to a minimum activity quota. Basically the way an MAQ works is a program will force you to refer at least one depositing player per month or in some cases force a number of these onto you.

Negative Carry Over (NCO)

Negative Carry Over is a common phrase used by gambling affiliate programs and since we are dealing with a product where players can win money, this implies the referring affiliate won’t get paid a commission as there is no revenue generated. Many programs have no negative carry-over which means that after a month has finished, if you had players that won money then your commission could be $0 even if revenue was say -$5000. This means the negative balance isn’t carried over to the next month and you start from zero for net revenue. Your existing players can keep depositing but it just means you’ll never carry a negative balance.

For more help on finding a good gambling affiliate program or getting a recommendation visit gaffg.com. They also offer affiliate coaching, SEO, website designs and have many exclusive deals for new webmasters to join.

Glossary and acronyms

FTD - First time depositing players
NDP - New Depositing Players

NCO - Negative Carry-Over

CPA - Cost Per Acquisition

RS - Revenue Share